This blog is to encorporate discussions on Lost Continents, Catastrophism, The origin of Modern Humans and the Out of Africa theory, Genetics and Human Diversity, The Origin and Spread of Civilization and Cultural Diffusion across the face of the Globe.

Hidden beneath the brilliant blue waters of the Indian Ocean lies a secret, scientists say: an entire micro-continent that detached itself some 60 million years ago.

And they found it through a few handfuls of sand.

The islands Reunion and Mauritius, both well-known tourist destinations off the southeastern coast of Africa, are hiding the micro-continent, a fragment known as Mauritia that detached while Madagascar and India drifted apart during the Precambrian era, scientists said.

It had been hidden under huge masses of lava. A group of geoscientists from Norway, South Africa, Britain and Germany published a study that suggests, based on the study of lava sand grains from the beach of Mauritius, the existence of further fragments.

The sand grains contain semi-precious zircons aged between 660 million and 1.9 billion years, which is explained by the fact that the zircons were carried by the lava as it pushed through subjacent continental crust of this age.

"We found zircons that we extracted from the beach sands, and these are something you typically find in a continental crust. They are very old in age,” Prof. Trond Torsvik, from the University of Oslo, Norway, told the BBC.

Three-quarters of a billion years ago, the surface of the Earth looked very different than it does today; the planet’s continents were joined in a vast supercontinent called Rodinia. And at the time, India nestled up against the island of Madagascar.

It seems Mauritia was sandwiched between the two.

And it may not have been alone: Such micro-continents in the oceans seem to occur more frequently than previously thought, according to Torsvik’s study.

The break-up of continents is often associated with mantle plumes: giant bubbles of hot rock that rise from the deep mantle and soften the tectonic plates from below, until the plates break apart at the hotspots.

Eastern Gondwana -- another early supercontinent -- broke apart about 170 million years ago in just such a process, the scientists say. At first, one part was separated, which in turn fragmented into Madagascar, India, Australia and Antarctica, which then migrated to their present position.

Plumes currently situated underneath the islands Marion and Reunion appear to have played a role in the emergence of the Indian Ocean.

This dating method was supplemented by a recalculation of plate tectonics, which explains exactly how and where the fragments ended up in the Indian Ocean. Bernhard Steinberger of the GFZ German Research Centre helped calculate the hotspot trail.

"The continent fragments continued to wander almost exactly over the Reunion plume, which explains how they were covered by volcanic rock," he said.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

MessageToEagle.com - DNA can be used as a telescope to look back into the past, and this is excatly what a group of scientists have done to cast more light on an ancient mystery.New ground-breaking study suggests that Scots are descendants of long lost tribes from the Sahara. In addition, the study also reveals that Scots are very closely related to Napoleon Bonaparte!The new study is based on research conducted by geneticist Dr Jim Wilson and his team at Edinburgh University. After testing DNA samples from almost 1,000 scots, researchers found that 1 per cent of all Scots are descended from the Berber and Tuareg tribesmen of the Sahara.One of the startling revelations, was the discovery of DNA linked to Napoleon Bonaparte. The research team discovered that Tom Conti, who took part in the project has a a family link to Napoleon Bonaparte, the French dictator. It was discovered that the actor's DNA marker is Saracen in origin and that his ancestors settled in Italy around the 10th century before one of them, Giovanni Buonaparte, settled in Corsica and founded the family line that sired Napoleon.
"Some friends said they weren't surprised to find out Napoleon and I were related, but it came as quite a shock to me. In fact, I didn't believe it at first," the actor said. The use of DNA allows scientists to use it as telescope to look back in time at where our ancestors once lived. it can be an amazing journey that can take you to a really surprising place. When Dr. Wilson discovered that some of the participants had DNA hailed from the Sahara, he had to double-check. "I didn't believe it at first and checked it twice. But more than one, in fact quite a few of our participants had this marker that is only found in and around the Sahara and among the blue men of the Tuareg.

Scotland, a beautiful and mysterious country.

So what on earth is it doing in Scotland? I didn't know. It took me a little while to work it out but what I learned was that it was spread to Spain by the Moorish conquest of Spain, and then it came up the Atlantic margins, along the coast and up to France and then up to Scotland," Dr. Wilson said. For Mr Moffat, the author of The Scots: A Genetic Journey, the results have been fascinating. He said: "When the great Roman emperor Septimius Severus invaded Scotland with the largest army ever seen north of the Tweed, 40,000 legionaries and auxiliaries and a supporting fleet, he fought the Maeatae. They were mentioned by Roman historians as a fierce people and much later, noted by Adomnan, the biographer of St Columba.

No-one knows the true origin of the Tuareg, where they came from or when they arrived in the Sahara.

"And then they disappeared from history," Mr Moffat said. "Now they are found. DNA has uncovered a high concentration of a distinctive marker clustered around Stirling and the foothills of the Ochils - the homeland of the fierce Maeatae. These are stories only DNA can tell."This is not the end to this incredible story. Dr. Wilson promises more surprises. "We are sequencing the whole genome of seven Scots whose DNA is central to our history and we are looking at the role of Neanderthal DNA in Scotland," Dr. Wilson said.We can expect to hear more from Dr. Wilson and his team in the near future. @ MessageToEagle.com

[--Rather more likely is the probability that Scotland and the Saharans were linked to each other by the Megalithic culture that once stretched from Scotland to the Sahara and included the building of Stonehenge and other great stone monuments. Corsica and Sardinia were also known as areas where the culture had a stronghold. At one time, the Atlantic Bronze Age and a rather late phase of the Megalithic culture, the Atlantic seaboard from Britain to NW Africa was controlled by the city located at Tartessos, in the Iberian peninsula-DD]

Mysterious Jade Artifact Of Unknown Origin Puzzles Scientists

MessageToEagle.com - Scientists are currently trying to determine the origin of a mysterious jade artifact recently discovered. According to the reserachers this finding is very puzzling because the rock has never been described in the archaeological record of the region. So, where does it come from? Researchers are uncertain and say the discovery is geochemically extraordinary!This extremely unusual example of jade was found by an international team of archaeologists and geologists in the Southwest Pacific, thousands of miles away from the nearest known geological source. The small green artifact is about 3,300 years old and has a chemical composition that is unlike any other described jade. Found during an archaeological excavation on a coral island in Papua New Guinea, the rock is thought to have been used as a wood gouge by the people living there.But where did it come from? The researchers, from the American Museum of Natural History, the University of Otago (New Zealand), and the University of Papua New Guinea, address this question in an upcoming special issue of the European Journal of Mineralogy on jadeitite, the rock that defines one type of jade. Jade is a general term for two extremely tough rocks—jadeite jade (jadeitite) and nephrite jade, each composed almost entirely from a single mineral.
Throughout history, these rocks have been made into tools and ornamental gems that were worn, traded, and treasured. Many nephrite jade sources exist, but the prominent locations are China, New Zealand, Russia, and Canada. Far rarer is jadeite jade, which was used by people living in what is now Central America and Mexico over a span of two millennia prior to the arrival of European colonists. "In the Pacific, jadeite jade as ancient as this artifact is only known from Japan and its usage in Korea," said George Harlow, a curator in the Museum’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and the lead guest editor for the special journal issue. "It’s never been described in the archaeological record of New Guinea."
A photo of a rock sample collected by C.E.A. Wichmann in 1898 from the Torare River in the Papua province of Indonesia. On loan from Utrecht University, the rock is thought to be a match to the Emirau Island jade artifact. (R.L.M. Vissers, Utrecht University)
The artifact was recovered from Emirau Island in the Bismark Archipelago. It was likely dropped from a stilt house into the water below and covered by years of beach sand.After preliminary analysis at Academia Sinica (Taiwan) and the University of Otago, the gouge was sent to the Museum, where it was studied with x-ray microdiffraction, a technique that bounces a small beam of x-rays off the specimen to elucidate the atomic structure of the material, and, consequently, the types of minerals it contains. Harlow also used the Museum’s electron microprobe to determine the chemical composition of the minerals in the jadeitite."When we first looked at this artifact, it was very clear that it didn’t match much of anything that anyone knew about jadeite jade," Harlow said.The chemical composition of the jadeite in the rock is substantially different from that of other jadeitite samples. Jadeite, a mineral of sodium, aluminum, silicon and oxygen in its pure form, is usually mixed compositionally with small amounts of calcium, magnesium, and iron, representative of the minerals diopside and, to a lesser extent, hedenbergite. The jadeite in the newly discovered jade, however, has almost no diopside content and, instead, contains iron without added calcium, representing the mineral aegirine, containing sodium, iron, silicon, and oxygen.In addition and equally unusual, the artifact contains minerals rich in niobium and yttrium, which, according to Harlow, have never been previously observed in a jadeitite. "It makes very little sense based on how we know these rocks form, and certainly not in the concentration that we see," he says.But the even bigger mystery is where this unusual rock came from. Only one jadeite source has been reported with similar chemical properties—a site in Baja California Sur, Mexico. If this were the gouge’s original home, though, it would have had to been transported across the Pacific, a highly improbable scenario for the Neolithic people of the time."This jadeite tool points toward prehistoric contacts with the north coast of New Guinea," said Glenn Summerhayes, an archaeologist at the University of Otago and a co-author on the paper. "The users of this jadeite gouge were part of the movement of Austronesian-speaking people we call Lapita, who appeared in the western Pacific almost instantaneously around 3,300 years ago, then quickly spread across the Pacific out to Samoa in a couple hundred years, and from there formed the ancestral population of the people we know as Polynesians. Where they came from beforehand has always been a matter of debate, so any find linking these early Lapita settlements with the west is important in modeling the nature of their beginning."

A photograph of the front of the jade gouge shown with a centimeter scale (Les O’Neil, University of Otago)

After investigating the possibility of other sources in Asia and coming up empty-handed, the researchers came across a clue in the form of an unpublished manuscript by German scientist C. E. A. Wichmann. A professor at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, Wichmann collected some curious rocks from the Torare River in the Papua province of Indonesia in the beginning of the 20th century. According to Wichmann’s manuscript, the rocks he collected have chemical properties that are very similar to the Emirau Island jadeite.Harlow is now investigating samples from Wichmann’s collection, on loan from the Institute of Earth Sciences at Utrecht University and the National Museum of Natural History in Leiden, to determine if a new source for this unusual type of jadeite has been found. So far, the data support the hypothesis."The discovery of this artifact’s source can be eagerly anticipated as something geochemically extraordinary," Harlow said.

Other authors on the paper include Hugh L. Davies, University of Papua New Guinea, who brought the Wichmann work to light, and Lisa Matisoo-Smith, University of Otago.MessageToEagle.com based on material provided by American Museum Of Natural Historyhttp://www.messagetoeagle.com/mystjadepuzzlesscientists.php

There is some evidence that these structures do resemble Mesoamerican ceremonial centers and that the pyramid building cultures of the two areas are possibly directly related. This may lend credence to Lewis Spence's theory of a sunken land of Antillia where the Antilles now exist in our more modern times.

Was there an ancient "lost civilization" in Cuba?

Today, the public’s
perspective of Native American history is often based on the appearance of the
New World when European colonists first occupied the lands of indigenous
peoples. Mexico, Central America and Peru are viewed as the locations of the
most advanced native civilizations. In the United States, the location of
indigenous ethnic groups in 1776 has in the past been assumed to have been their
location for the previous 1000 years. However, the facts uncovered by
archaeologists in the late 20th century have radically changed our understanding
of the Western Hemisphere’s ancient history.

An earthen pyramid on the
western coast of Cuba probably would have looked like this Olmec mound [Credit:
VR image by Richard Thornton]

Prior to around 1600
BC, the most advanced societies in the northern half of the Western Hemisphere
are now known to have been located in the Southeastern United States, possibly
also in Cuba, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola. The first public “architecture” in
the Western Hemisphere was in northern Louisiana. A circular cluster of mounds
were built around 3500 BC at Watson’s Brake. The cultivation of indigenous
plants began in the Southeast began at least by 3,500 BC. The oldest known
pottery in the Western Hemisphere has been found in the vicinity of Augusta, GA
along the Savannah River and dated to around 2,500 BC. Beginning around
2,200 BC, indigenous peoples along the South Atlantic Coast and especially
around Sapelo Island, GA began creating massive shell rings, which functioned as
villages. The rings were abandoned around 1,600 BC. At this time, there was NO
pottery or large scale public architecture in Mexico. Louisiana platform
villages Around 1,600 BC an
ethnic group began constructing large villages on raised semi-circular, earthen
platforms along tributaries of the Lower Mississippi River. Within these
platform villages, they also built ceremonial mounds. A mound built at the
Poverty Point, LA village site is one of the largest ever constructed in the
United States. The platform villages were long abandoned when the French
arrived in the region in the late 1600s AD, so the identity of the Native ethnic
groups, who occupied them, is not known. The rise of the
Zoque (Olmec) Civlization Around 1,600 BC a
new culture appeared on the Gulf Coast of the Mexican State of Vera Cruz. It
introduced the construction of pyramidal mounds and the technology for making
pottery to Mexico. By 1,500 BC the Zoque were building large villages and
cultivating plants indigenous to Mexico, in addition to the cultivated plants
that are typical of the Caribbean Basin. By 1200 BC the Zoque were building
cities with large pyramids and numerous public structures. The Zoque towns and
ceremonial centers were abandoned around 600 BC. This is also the same time
period that the platform village at Poverty Point, LA was abandoned.
Surviving history of
the Zoque preserved in stone, indicates that the Zoque claimed to have arrived
on the coast of Mexico from a homeland across the Gulf of Mexico in three giant
flotillas of sea-going canoes. This is not an impossible claim because the
ancestors of the Polynesians were exploring the Pacific Basin as early as 50,000
BC! In fact, the stone statues and figurines that the Zoque carved describe
themselves as looking like the Maori Polynesians of New Zealand. The Yuchi
Indians of the Southeastern United States also have a tradition that they
paddled to North America from the “home of the sun” in the East. Archaeologists
search for a “missing link” The Zoque arrived in
Mexico carrying many traits of “civilization.” They did not look like the
indigenous peoples of central Mexico, but definitely journeyed from somewhere
else in the Western Hemisphere. Archaeologists have not determined
conclusively their place of origin. Pseudo-archaeologists through the years
have published books claiming that the Zoque were from central Africa, Egypt,
Phoenicia or even Scandinavia. However, absolutely no archaeological or genetic
evidence backs these theories. It is known that
Polynesians did settle in North America at a very early date. Ancient Polynesian
skeletons have been confirmed in Mexico; perhaps as old as 40,000 BC. Even
North American Indian tribes, such as the Creeks, carry traces of Polynesian
DNA. There was probably a Polynesian culture thriving in Baja California when
the Spanish first arrived in the 1500s. So for an indigenous ethnic group in
Mexico such as the Zoque, having Polynesian features is quite
plausible. Author: Richard
Thornton | Source: Examiner/National [May 06,
2011][-- the attribution of these early populations as Polynesians is mistaken as there were no actual settlements of Polynesians anywhere near that old: the author should have said "Ancestors of the Polynesians". This would suggest that Thor Heyerdahl's theory about Polynesia being settled by Natives from America could have an element of truth to it, however some of the peoples the author mentions are the same ones that I had suggested could be a mixture of Indians (East Indians) and Indonesians, probably also including Oriental settlers as well. That mixture would just about equal what the Polynesians were thought to have come out of-DD]

Modern culture emerged in Africa 20,000 years earlier than thought

July 30, 2012|By Thomas H. Maugh II
Modern culture emerged in southern Africa at least 44,000 years ago, more than 20,000 years earlier than anthropologists had previously believed, researchers reported Monday.
That blossoming of technology and art occurred at roughly the same time that modern humans were migrating from Africa to Europe, where they soon displaced Neanderthals. Many of the characteristics of the ancient culture identified by anthropologists are still present in hunter-gatherer cultures of Africa today, such as the San culture of southern Africa, the researchers said.

Objects found in the archaeological site called Border Cave include a) a wooden digging stick; b) a wooden poison applicator; c) a bone arrow point decorated with a spiral incision filled with red pigment; d) a bone object with four sets of notches; e) a lump of beeswax; and f) ostrich eggshell beads and marine shell beads used as personal ornaments.
(Francesco d'Errico and Lucinda Backwell)

The new evidence was provided by an international team of researchers excavating at an archaeological site called Border Cave in the foothills of the Lebombo Mountains on the border of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa and Swaziland. The cave shows evidence of occupation by human ancestors going back more than 200,000 years, but the team reported in two papers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they were able to accurately date their discoveries to 42,000 to 44,000 years ago, a period known as the Later Stone Age or [Comparable to]the Upper Paleolithic Period in Europe.
Among the organic -- and thus datable -- artifacts the team found in the cave were ostrich eggshell beads, thin bone arrowhead points, wooden digging sticks, a gummy substance called pitch that was used to attach bone and stone blades to wooden shafts, a lump of beeswax likely used for the same purpose, worked pig tusks that were probably use for planing wood, and notched bones used for counting.
"They adorned themselves with ostrich egg and marine shell beads, and notched bones for notational purposes," said paleoanthropologist Lucinda Blackwell of the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa, a member of the team. "They fashioned fine bone points for use as awls and poisoned arrowheads. One point is decorated with a spiral groove filled with red ochre, which closely parallels similar marks that San make to identify their arrowheads when hunting."
The very thin bone points are "very good evidence" for the use of bows and arrows, said co-author Paola Villa, a curator at the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. Some of the bone points were apparently coated with ricinoleic acid, a poison made from the castor bean. "Such bone points could have penetrated thick hides, but the lack of 'knock-down' power means the use of poison probably was a requirement for successful kills," she said.
The discovery also represents the first time pitch-making has been documented in South Africa, Villa said. The process requires burning peeled bark in the absence of air. The Stone Age residents probably dug holes in the ground, inserted the bark, lit it on fire, and covered the holes with stones, she said.
LATimesScience@gmail.com
twitter.com/@LATMaugh

Work carved from mammoth ivory has been redated and 1,000 new fragments discovered—but it won’t make it to British Museum show

The star exhibit initially promised for the British Museum’s “Ice Age Art” show will not be coming—but for a good reason. New pieces of Ulm’s Lion Man sculpture have been discovered and it has been found to be much older than originally thought, at around 40,000 years. This makes it the world’s earliest figurative sculpture. At the London exhibition, which opens on 7 February, a replica from the Ulm Museum will instead go on display.

The story of the discovery of the Lion Man goes back to August 1939, when fragments of mammoth ivory were excavated at the back of the Stadel Cave in the Swabian Alps, south-west Germany. This was a few days before the outbreak of the Second World War. When it was eventually reassembled in 1970, it was regarded as a standing bear or big cat, but with human characteristics.

The ivory from which the figure had been carved had broken into myriad fragments. When first reconstructed, around 200 pieces were incorporated into the 30cm-tall sculpture, with about 30% of its volume missing.

Further fragments were later found among the previously excavated material and these were added to the figure in 1989. At this point, the sculpture was recognised as representing a lion. Most specialists have regarded it as male, although paleontologist Elisabeth Schmid controversially argued that it was female, suggesting that early society might have been matriarchal.

[Against this is the statement that some male Cave Lions appear to have been maneless and that this figure seems to sport an obvious penis-DD]

The latest news is that almost 1,000 further fragments of the statue have been found, following recent excavations in the Stadel Cave by Claus-Joachim Kind. Most of these are minute, but a few are several centimetres long. Some of the larger pieces are now being reintegrated into the figure.

Conservators have removed the 20th-century glue and filler from the 1989 reconstruction, and are now painstakingly reassembling the Lion Man, using computer-imaging techniques. “It is an enormous 3D puzzle”, says the British Museum curator Jill Cook.

The new reconstruction will give a much better idea of the original. In particular, the back of the neck will be more accurate, the right arm will be more complete and the figure will be a few centimetres taller.

An imaginative sculptor

Even more exciting than the discovery of new pieces, the sculpture’s age has been refined using radio-carbon dating of other bones found in the strata. This reveals a date of 40,000 years ago, while until recently it was thought to be 32,000 years old. Once reconstruction is completed, several tiny, unused fragments of the mammoth ivory are likely to be carbon dated, and this is expected to confirm the result.

This revised dating pushes the Lion Man right back to the oldest sculptures, which have been found in two other caves in the Swabian Alps. These rare finds are dated at 35,000 to 40,000 years, but the Lion Man is by far the largest and most complex piece. A few carved items have been found in other regions which are slightly older, but these have simple patterns, not figuration.

What was striking about the sculptor of the Lion Man sculptor is that he or she had a mind capable of imagination rather than simply representing real forms. As Cook says, it is “not necessary to have a brain with a complex pre-frontal cortex to form the mental image of a human or a lion—but it is to make the figure of a lion-man”. The Ulm sculpture therefore sheds further light on the evolution of homo sapiens.

Conservators experimented by making a replica of Lion Man, calculating that it would take a highly skilled carver at least 400 hours using flint tools (two months’ work in daylight). This means that the carver would have had to be looked after by hunter-gatherers, which presupposes a degree of social organisation. There is an ongoing debate on what the Lion Man represents, and whether it is linked to shamanism and the spirit world.

Initially, it was hoped that the original of the Lion Man would be presented at the British Museum’s exhibition, but this has not proved possible because conservators need further time to get the figure reconstructed as accurately as possible. The Ulm Museum now plans to unveil it in November.

1) this is an imported African deity and African figural work presumably preceeded its appearance in Europe, only Science has not recognised the fact yet, and

2) this is a very old Hero deity that shows a man who slew a male lion singlehanded and thereafter gained Lion Powers, including the right to wear a lion skin (and presumably transform himself into a lion). This would be the oldest version of Samson and Hercules, an African hero originally and quite possibly intended to represent a Divine King character.

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